BFG Week In Review Podcast #052: ‘Sea of Tranquility,’ ‘The Secrets of Dumbledore,’ ‘Halo,’ and ‘Tokyo Vice’

In this week’s exciting edition of the BFG Week in Review, Dan Friedman endures Neal Pollack’s rants about how bad most pandemic novels are. Emily St. John Mandel’s ‘Sea of Tranquility‘ is, Friedman says, kind of a weak “étude” in COVID anxiety (in sci-fi form), but he doesn’t find it offensive. Pollack does find it offensive, but somehow the conversation remains friendly.

Meanwhile, Stephen Garrett comes into the pod barn to listen to Pollack make fun of the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Pollack revels in the relative decline of the Harry Potter universe, whereas Garrett calls the new ‘Secrets of Dumbledore‘ a “nothingburger.” It’s all just intellectual property anyway. There are no more good Harry Potter stories.

Ryan Kallberg makes his podcast debut to talk about ‘Halo,’ a show that only exists on Paramount Plus for a small number of people. It’s weird to make a TV show about a sci-fi shooter game that doesn’t contain much shooting. As a ‘Halo‘ fan, ‘Halo’ disappoints Kallberg because it doesn’t contain enough Halo.

‘Tokyo Vice’ on HBO Max doesn’t disappoint him at all, and even though Pollack hates Ansel Elgort, Kallberg reassures him that Tokyo Vice mostly mutes his Elgortitude. However, there is one narrative convention that Kallberg doesn’t like, and that leads to another Pollack rant.

It’s the rantiest episode of the BFG podcast yet! Check it out.

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